Hi

I have a chart which I want to reduce the height of to fit into a panel. The points on the chart are fixed distance and co-ordinates. I can't see a way to reduce the distance between the points without flattening the circles/points, but I know there are 100s of inkscape functions I'm ignorant to.

Is there a way to anchor points to the sub-background, which will keep them located with it but not alter shape/size when doing height reduction?

Thanks

Hello,

a method to do that is much the same described here:
http://www.inkscapeforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=15358#p57403
Just scale the height only with the transformation panel instead, without ticking in the scale proportionally option.

Not one of those 100s of functions will do this for you, sadly enough -- not in one step. But it's quite possible. What you will have to do:

Select everything in your diagram and scale it down to the shape you want it. This means, if I understand you correctly, that some objects get undesirably squashed because you are not scaling proportionately. No problem!

Next step, select only the items that are distorted. They should be positioned properly so at this point you just want to restore them to the correct proportions, right?

Open the transform dialog box (Ctrl-shift-M) and check the box that says Apply to each object separately.
Now in the scale tab enter the exact dimensions you want each object to be - e.g. 30 px width and 30 px height. It does not matter what the current size is unless you use the "%" option - don't pick it!(You can choose the units from the drop down menu.)
You can repeat this step as many times as you like so you don't have to be precise. You are telling Inkscape, "I want all the objects selected right now to be this height and width, no matter what size and shape they are now." If this is not what you want then I have misunderstood your question, sorry.

That should be it. You probably see that the really hard step is to select all those dots or circles one by one. There are ways to do that quickly but it depends on the version of Inkscape you are using. Development builds allow you to select by type of object, fill, stroke etc. Older versions have various models of the find dialog that are a bit more clunky and require you to fill in some unique feature of the objects you want to select.

Good luck!